You’re killing me, Sora no Woto.

So much potential is being wasted with stupidity. I guess what you see above counts as character development… but it makes no sense.

How did she go from bad to good after just hearing a tiny advice?

Kanata: Like the sound wants to play itself…

What does that even mean? A bugle is a man-made instrument. It sounds like whatever man wants it to sound. Let’s entertain the notion, however. Was Kanata forcing the bugle to play in ways it didn’t want to play? Before this utterly random epiphany, Kanata had bad tone. I’m not a music expert, but I have played trombone and it sounded like Kanata’s bad tone was the result of her embouchure being too small or she’s not directing proper airflow. So somehow allowing the sound to “play itself,” solved all of her mechanical problems? Then what does this have to do with allowing the instrument to “play itself?”

I always thought Kanata’s musical development made no sense either. Most people start out by playing one note and one note perfectly. Then they move on to another note and practice that perfectly. They keep doing this until they have several notes in their reportoire. Finally, they put it all together — maybe even into a song. From the very start, we just see Kanata blaring away on her bugle without any sense to take it step by step, piece by piece. But somehow, allowing the sound to “play itself,” solved everything. Right, right.

I’m not sure the source of the advice made much sense either. The glassmaker claims that young people tend to make a similar mistake. He then starts blowing some glass. For whatever reason, the rest of the room pauses and stares slack-jawed as if they’ve never seen him do this before.

Maybe it’s just that exciting! The world of glassmaking is so damn exciting! Anyhow, he gets the desired shape, but then claims, “I’m not trying to make it this shape.” Uh, I think you did. Let’s hear the man out though: “The glass wants to be this shape.” W-what? It’s one of those things that sound all zen-like, but when you pause to think about it, it’s like… what? If he had wanted it to look different, he might have blown it differently. Somehow, however, he claims you just gotta let the glass do its thing.

I bet the makers of these were just like “Okay glass, I’m gonna blow and you do what you wanna do” and then the glass magically shitted out a klein bottle.

I think you made this dolphin thing, sir. Did you just, I dunno, stick a piece of glass over flame and the glass magically shaped itself into a dolphin? No, you did it. You shaped it. Maybe… maybe the glass wanted to be this shap-… no, no it didn’t and couldn’t have.

Yeah, you could blow on some glass and make a boring jar, but that doesn’t get us anywhere. You have to manipulate it.

I’m sure you made those glass bottles behind the merchant too and I’m sure the glass didn’t just decide to become perfectly cylindrical bottles. You had to manipulate it.

Skilled workers are capable of shaping almost any vessel forms by rotating the pipe, swinging it and controlling the temperature of the piece while they blow. They can produce a great variety of glass objects, ranging from drinking cups to window glass. — Wikipedia

Hey, would you look at that? It sounds like those “skilled” assholes are not letting the bottles be all that the glass can be! HOORAH!

As for music, you shape the sound to your liking. There’s nothing wrong with forcing the sound to be whatever you’d like it to be as long as you get the sound you want. I know verbs like “force” are scary and mean, but it’s okay. It’s just sound; it doesn’t know any better. Or maybe the world of Sora no Woto are against mutes because they “force” the brass instrument to sound all weird. No trilling, no slurring, none of that stuff — you’re making the sound all weird!

More Stupidity with Kanata…

Noel: Do you think a machine that killed a lot of people is scary?
Kanata: Yes. But I guess I’m more afraid of the people who used it than the machine itself. Because this trumpet… when I play it, it’s awful. But when Rio plays it, it’s so pretty. I’m sure a tank is the same kind of thing.

Oh great, the “guns don’t kill people; people kill people” argument. Okay, this should make us pause right here. Kanata just compared a tank to a trumpet. A trumpet can make good or bad music. There’s nothing a tank does that is beautiful.

Kanata: And a while ago, Rio played me a song from inside it. It can make such beautiful music!

But that’s not the tank’s original purpose. The tank’s original purpose is to be an instrument of war. Just because someone decided to stick a stereo system in the tank doesn’t make a tank beautiful.

Kanata: I’m sure it’s a good tank!

Cool. Let me stick some flowers and Mozart on a hydrogen bomb. When it’s falling, it can play classical music! I’m sure it’s a good bomb!

Yui’s dumb, but she’s in high school and she just plays music. Kanata is dumb and she’s in a serious show. Somehow, that just makes it even worse.

This show has an interesting premise (soldiers and a city adapting to a post-war reality) and an interesting theme (redemption), but it fills the cast with utterly retarded people. I feel dumber watching this show. Thanks Sora no Woto.

Utterly retarded people is correct, I’ve never seen more fail of a wanna-be military squad. Unlike K-ON, this show begs to be taken with moderate seriousness and… well, it just doesn’t work when the troopers aren’t trying to do their jobs proper.

“There’s nothing a tank does that is beautiful.”
Polish it, march it down red square with a column of others, I think it’s quite beautiful (=9). After all, instruments of war has another purpose people keeps forgetting: to sit there and look nice and intimidate would-be-aggressors.

I’m finding it strange you’re watching a military show when you’re so anti-war.

Would I watch this anime if I didn’t have a blog? Probably not. And it’s not being as anti-war as you think. The sole anti-war sentiment is being delivered by an immature, emotional child. The rest of the anime rarely shows any of the negative aspects of war.

I never mention the anime was explicitly overall a anti-war message but at least in this episode we have a glimpse of it. And so far for a military show it has focused more or less on that apocalyptic event rather then the war that came after (at least from my interpretation, that War came after the apocalypse) So if you want some gory anti-war message, we’ve got about 20 episodes left for that. But I highly doubt there will be much of a focus on the gory war since the anime is set in peacetime and most people seem to have forgotten about that given how mundane the series has been. (Bright colours, festivals, barely needed soldiers)

Just keep in mind that quite a bit of military fiction focuses on grand heroic gestures. Actually I don’t know if the series is ever going to focus on wartime since it’s just shown one normal day in town after another with characters that barely act as soldiers.

My point is that the message was weak and sort of pathetic if it was meant to be anti-war at all. There’s no weight to a child’s emotional outbursts. It’s almost a crass reference: “Oh yeah, war makes orphans out of kids, but moving right along to more stupid Kanata…”

So if you want some gory anti-war message

I really don’t care what the message is as long as it’s interesting and makes sense. In fact, I never declared myself to be anti-war whatsoever. Sometimes, war (and even tanks too) serves a necessary purpose (though it is rarely fought with the right purpose in mind). I just don’t ever think it’s beautiful.

Let’s create a petition to paint all of our tanks pink and equip them with stereo systems playing peaceful music. Our wars would end instantly, as the enemy would come to the realization we’re actually good. XD

I actually found that ‘create your own sound’ part somehow deep. Yeah… I kind of imagined it that way: ‘All the time until now she was trying to force herself to play something as good as someone other, trying a melody she can’t even remember’ and now she just.. I don’t know… Improvised? (feel free to add ‘heart’ ‘let it out’ , ‘soul’ and ‘wind’ into it, to make my theory even funnier)That much made sense to me.

About the rest – I agree, many dumb, supposed-to-be-deep moments. ‘It’s a good tank’ was just fucking ridiculous. Hopefully no more Kanata and Noel episodes.

Even if we interpret it your way, it doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve played an instrument and all it takes is hard work and practice with the right mechanics. We practice by imitating what others have done. There’s nothing wrong in Kanata trying to sound like Rio. Every musician is just copying and building on what others in the past have done. There’s no magical realization pill, real or imaginary, that will suddenly unlock true music from the instrument. There’s no “respect the horn and let it play itself” mumbo jumbo. You. just. practice.

The same applies to the glassmaking dude. You don’t just let the glass decide its shape. In fact, that doesn’t even make sense. His whole craft is about manipulating glass and he’s trying to tell me he just lets the glass do whatever it wants? It’s a load of bull.

The same applies to the glassmaking dude. You don’t just let the glass decide its shape. In fact, that doesn’t even make sense. His whole craft is about manipulating glass and he’s trying to tell me he just lets the glass do whatever it wants? It’s a load of bull.

I love how you’re so worked up about this! Don’t ever lose this seriousness, little one. The world should make sense. You have every reason to demand that it does.

I have to disagree with you about the episode, it’s setting up just right for the series to take a magical/mythological turn somewhere. Clearly, some people; Naomi, Rio, Felicia, Noel, and probably others believe that Kanata’s arrival will herald the beginning/start of something.

What Carl taught Kanata pretty much follows the Zen tradition; don’t fight the flow, be the flow. Also, the idea of a linkage between music, power, and passion is pretty common in anime and science fiction; Black Heaven, Macross, Trigun, and so forth.

Also, I don’t find the squad’s behavior too out of place. I spend 23 years in the military and have on occasion been stationed as a small group a long way from the main force and unless a higher up stopped by, or we had some reason to raise the alert status we were very laid back, but not unprofessional. I think that most people don’t realise that you can’t keep yourself at 100% unless you’re in combat or your unit will quickly burn out.

What Carl taught Kanata pretty much follows the Zen tradition; don’t fight the flow, be the flow.

I know it sounds zen-like; I even mentioned this fact above. I question it because it is not applicable to musicianship. Rivers and other one way only stuff? Sure, but not music. An instrument has no singular flow to it — the idea of it is nonsensical. It’s a man-made instrument designed to produce a variety of sounds. As a result, there is no flow to fight because you are the flow. So basically, telling her to “go with the flow” shouldn’t help because that was the problem to begin with: Kanata had the “wrong” flow if she wanted to sound like Rio. She wasn’t properly imitating Rio’s flow. Letting the instrument “play itself” a billion times shouldn’t have fixed her problem. Her improvement sounded like a change in mechanics, which has nothing to do with “going with the flow,” etc.

Similarly, there is no singular flow with glassmaking because each glassmaker is the flow that dictates the production of the glass. Carl’s advice was a silly idea that was thrown in there to sound deep, but really wasn’t, and in the real world, it wouldn’t help anybody.

Also, I don’t find the squad’s behavior too out of place.

I never said a squad in peacetime can’t be relaxed. I’m saying that the characters in this anime (particularly Kanata) are stupid and they say stupid stuff. A tank is not similar to a trumpet, a tank is not beautiful, a tank is not good.

I think the problem with Sora no Woto is that it’s trying to force the music aspect and mix it with the military aspect. The thing with K-On it was completely focused on the music aspect (albeit with a really bad dose of procrastination) with a number of plots involving saving the club, practicing and concerts.

Here it feels like, they’ve written about military garrison life first and decided to add a really bad metaphor connecting with the music part of the show later.

Let’s hope they get to expanding more on the apocalypse and the subsequent war because I do not think they can keep up with more ridiculous military and music metaphors.

And how can tanks not be beautiful? They’re aesthetically pleasing to my male military otaku eyes. Not to mention they are awe inspiring when they fire shells at the enemy making the enemy scatter like ants before crushing them in a battle of encirclement. Just cause people die from it doesn’t make a tank any less beautiful.

At the end of the day. People die in wars of course. It’s just one guy doing their job and the other guy doing theirs at the orders of the superiors. But of course, if it weren’t for tanks, aircrafts and increasingly advanced bombs to overwhelm the enemy more soldiers would be dead. It’s a tool of war but an amazing tool of war that offers many possibilities. Of course when it comes to war, I tend to focus on the strategy behind it all.

And at the end of the day, it’s still a well drawn tank even if it has a gory purpose. Speaking of which shall I start making complaints to Robot Entertainment for having cavalry units that ‘KILL’ people, Empire: Total War for having not so beautiful ships that sink fictional sailors. Or shall I start with Modern Warfare 2 and ask them to replace their detailed guns?

At the end of the day. People die in wars of course. It’s just one guy doing their job and the other guy doing theirs at the orders of the superiors.

Nobody’s disagreeing with you here.

But of course, if it weren’t for tanks, aircrafts and increasingly advanced bombs to overwhelm the enemy more soldiers would be dead.

That’s debatable. For instance, it’s not as if there’s an ironclad consensus out there that the US were in the right to use the atomic bombs on Japan.

And at the end of the day, it’s still a well drawn tank even if it has a gory purpose.

Okay, it’s well designed for its purpose. I never disputed that. How does that make it beautiful? Can anything be beautiful just because it serves a purpose and serves it very well?

Speaking of which shall I start making complaints to Robot Entertainment for having cavalry units that ‘KILL’ people, Empire: Total War for having not so beautiful ships that sink fictional sailors.

I don’t even know what your point is. I’m just saying it’s ridiculous to compare a tank to a trumpet. I’m also just saying a tank is not beautiful because it’s an instrument of murder. Apparently, the latter is very contentious with you.

Like I mention above, aesthetics wise if you just ignore what it does.

But I agree with you on the point that the metaphor of comparing music and military in this show is getting ridiculous. As I expected from the start the music element and military element is really clashing with each other.

You seem to have completely missed the point. The show is going for a transcendent, ephemeral feel, but by bombarding it with realism, your over-analysis is killing the moment. There are plenty of instances where I’ve slaved away, trying to figure out what is missing, only to have realize I’ve been looking at it all wrong one day. Seeing something in a new light doesn’t undermine all the work and effort you’ve put into learning, it’s just that — seeing it in a new light.

Tanks are never beautiful? So, destruction and war has never been beautiful or poetic? That sounds a bit close minded, in my opinion. Tanks can be used to protect, as they [would be] in this show, just as much as they can be used to destroy.

You seem to have completely missed the point. The show is going for a transcendent, ephemeral feel

Just because something wants to be transcendent and ephemeral doesn’t automatically make it the case. Just because something sounds all zen-like doesn’t make it the case. By making simple errors, the anime fails to immerse the audience into its atmosphere. No one would drive a car in an anime in a Shakespearean play. Likewise, no actual musician would benefit from Carl’s advice, no matter how zen-like it sounds and I say that as a former trombone player. I say that after having asked someone who actually has a degree in music. Oh right right, the only thing that matters is what the anime IS TRYING to do, not what the anime actually does. A for effort!

your over-analysis is killing the moment.

Ah yes, the “you’re over-thinking it” argument. The problem with this stance is that you could use it anywhere. Oh, if you ignore all the crass consumerism and misogyny in the Transformers movies, they’re absolutely great! Oh, your analysis of Bella is absolutely ruining the romantic moment of Twilight! In my mind, “over-thinking” is a shitty, lazy rebuttal. You can either refute my argument by challenging its premises, or don’t. Simply accusing me of over-thinking or over-analysis, however, is not good enough.

Tanks can be used to protect, as they [would be] in this show, just as much as they can be used to destroy.

So what? Who ever said that protection was inherently beautiful? Violence may be justified, but that does not make it beautiful.

So, destruction and war has never been beautiful…?

LOL.

The poetry of destruction and war is irrelevant as poetic does not necessarily mean beautiful.

For those watching this with a military interest, I think it’s best to quit arguing over the tank bit and head on over to read that.animeblog and Crusader’s (who also happens to be a US soldier of some sort) posts about the show.

As I already stated, it is not the analyzing itself — it is that you are trying to say, “playing instruments comes with practice,” whereas the point the show is making is, “sometimes you can take a step back and see the bigger picture.” I already said this, and strangely, it’s the only part you failed to quote me on. Hardly a lazy argument, as you are intentionally taking the “magically learning how to play” out of context and putting it in a real setting.

I am a musician as well. Did I suddenly learn how to play because someone gave me some mystical advice? No. And yet I’m still able to understand the point of the scene. Your examples of Transformers and Twilight are not the same as this. You are taking my statements on overthinking to mean “abandon all criteria and anything should be good.” What I’m saying is, “don’t give out of context criteria to something that is clearly not striving to meet said criterion.”

I’m not very familiar to this site, but responding LOL really makes me think you’re a troll. If you seriously believe war and violence are never poetic, you simply haven’t seen a lot of art. The simplest examples, such as a great empire causing its own destruction by the very power it used to become great is proof enough that destruction can be both ironic and artistic. If violence and death were not poetic, death would not be such a widespread and bittersweet theme in art.

whereas the point the show is making is, “sometimes you can take a step back and see the bigger picture.”

Okay, let’s use your interpretation then.

“Oh, I’m playing so bad because I have bad tone. Maybe I should practice with the right mechanics. Nah, I should step back and see the big picture… whatever this big picture is. Oh wow, I’m good at playing now!”

Nope, still doesn’t make sense.

“Oh, I’m a bad glassmaker. Maybe I should just practice. Wait, I should just step back and see the big picture. Oh I’m a good glassmaker now!”

Sorry, it still doesn’t work for me.

If you seriously believe war and violence are never poetic, you simply haven’t seen a lot of art.

Poetic =/= beautiful. Art =/= beautiful. A lot of artists don’t even aim to create something beautiful. I never said war and destruction couldn’t be poetic. I said it couldn’t be beautiful.

ironic and artistic.

Neither of these words mean beautiful. I never said war can’t be ironic. I never said war can’t be the subject of something artistic. I said that war is not beautiful.

What I’m saying is, “don’t give out of context criteria to something that is clearly not striving to meet said criterion.”

The show is trying to be transcendent. It tries to be transcendent by having Carl give a zen-like advice. The advice, either way you interpret it, is actually not very useful to either music playing nor glassmaking. In fact, I argue that it doesn’t apply to music playing nor glassmaking whatsoever. As a result, I accuse the show of pretension.

How is this out of context criteria? Does it not matter at all that the advice is bad? I’m saying that if the anime wanted to sound deep, it should have given a better advice.

Well, that’s the thing. :) The scene is not about music, it’s a metaphor. Say a person wants to play the piano. For years, they hone their technical ability, learn to hit all the right keys at the right times, and yet the music doesn’t sound like it does on the CD. The notes are too loud, they conflict and drown each other out, it sounds terrible. Then, one day, you realize you’ve been standing on the damper pedal the whole time. You raise your foot, play exactly as you did before, and it’s perfect.

Does this apply to playing the trumpet? No. Does this apply to glass-blowing? Hell no. But the message still stands. I’m saying not to get strung up on the musical instruments. They are not the message, they are the tools to get the message across. If you think Sora no Woto picked stupid instruments, that’s fine. But I believe the message still got across and looking back, the tools aren’t all that important.

Yet you can’t really back up that statement. Nothing is inherently beautiful. Anything has the potential to be beautiful. Not that I hug trees or anything, but from the perspective of the Earth, war could be beautiful the same way the complexity of the human body’s immune system could be beautiful. I said you are close minded because you state, “war can not be beautiful,” as a matter of fact. You do not believe it has the potential to be beautiful.

Then, one day, you realize you’ve been standing on the damper pedal the whole time. You raise your foot, play exactly as you did before, and it’s perfect.

“Step back and see the whole picture” implies something intangible. Like how a jazz musician feels the music and improvises rather than merely playing the technical notes. Here, it just sounds like you’re correcting a minor error. Like Kanata sounded like she was just correcting a simple error. It doesn’t feel anything like “step back and see the whole picture.”

Does this apply to playing the trumpet? No. Does this apply to glass-blowing? Hell no. But the message still stands.

And I’m saying that this is pretension. If it doesn’t apply to either playing the trumpet or glass-blowing, then don’t say it. Say something else.

For instance, “A bird in hand is better than two in the bushes” is a true message. It still stands even if it doesn’t apply to either music nor glass-blowing. However, it would be ridiculous if Carl suddenly said it to Kanata. It would just be a thinly-veiled attempt to sound deep. This is the point I’m trying to make.

Yet you can’t really back up that statement.

So can you back the following two statements up?

Nothing is inherently beautiful. Anything has the potential to be beautiful.

Why is it that anything has the potential to be beautiful? Can murder be beautiful? Can suffering be beautiful? Why is nothing inherently beautiful?

You contend that war is the subject of many art and as a result, war can be beautiful. But I contend that not all art is meant to be beautiful.

You do not believe it has the potential to be beautiful.

When you can fight a war where there is no human suffering, then I’ll admit I’m wrong.

A minor mistake that could only be taken into account when you stopped looking at the keys and stepped outside the box. While I don’t agree that “seeing the whole picture” implies something intangible, Kanata’s allowing the sound to shape itself is much closer to your example of a jazz musician feeling the music, so I’d still say it’s more of a whole picture than it is a minor mistake.

Ah, pretension, I see what you are saying now. I believe our disagreement arises from our interpretation of that scene. You believe that it is about Kanata learning how to play the trumpet, if I’m not mistaken. My interpretation was more that it was set-up for the character’s philosophy during the remainder of the series.

In real life, you would only practice to get better. However, Sora no Woto has already introduced several supernatural and science fiction concepts. What I had taken from that scene is, in this anime’s world, when you relinquish reason to feeling, sound, air, etc. things you couldn’t accomplish before would become complete. I am under the assumption that using this concept to complete her instrument training was only the tip of the iceberg, and that this introduced theme would become more prominent in character’s lives as the show goes on.

I don’t need to back up those statements. Unless you believe that your interpretation of beauty is the only opinion that exists, those statements hold true because beauty is subjective. Nothing is inherently beautiful because everyone has a different criterion for beauty. Anything has the potential to be beautiful for the same reason. The burden of proof rests on your side: can you proof that war and destruction can not be beautiful in the eyes of anyone who can judge it?

I did not mean to imply that there is an absolute correlation between beauty and art. I mentioned art because I have seen art where I believe war, as well as destruction, murder and suffering have been depicted beautifully.

Ah, pretension, I see what you are saying now. I believe our disagreement arises from our interpretation of that scene. You believe that it is about Kanata learning how to play the trumpet, if I’m not mistaken.

The anime tried to be deep, which you yourself claimed (“The show is going for a transcendent, ephemeral feel”). Carl’s message (and by extension, the anime’s message), whether true or not, didn’t apply to the circumstances within the anime, which you yourself admitted (“Does this apply to playing the trumpet? No. Does this apply to glass-blowing? Hell no.”). As a result, the anime sounded deep but didn’t actually manage to be deep. I wrote the article to call out the pretension.

I’ve repeated myself a billion times and I’m tired of doing it. I won’t respond anymore to this argument. If you still disagree with me on anything, then so be it.

because beauty is subjective.

I don’t agree. Some aesthetic judgments are certainly subjective like “that mountain is beautiful,” but I don’t believe all aesthetic judgments are subjective. I don’t believe suffering can ever be beautiful. Just because someone might have a different criterion for beauty doesn’t prove anything. That criterion could be wrong. Anyone who thinks murder and suffering can be beautiful, well, I just think that is absurd. Both are morally heinous (let’s be clear: I’m talking about abject human suffering and not “oh I had to run two miles to diet”). Thus, I don’t believe they can ever be beautiful. Yes, I’m aware that I’m making normative judgments as well as aesthetic judgments. This fact doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe we can judge things in a vacuum removed from morality.

As a result, suffering is prima facie ugly. Does that mean great art can’t be made about suffering? No, I never claimed that. Good art can be thought-provoking, challenging, well-crafted, etc, but it doesn’t have to be beautiful. And as far as I can tell, no proper and complete portrayal of suffering (and by extension: murders, war, destruction, torture, etc.) in art can be beautiful. It can be great, but it can’t be beautiful because suffering is prima facie ugly.

This episode killed me. What the heck was the purpose? Only advancement in the plot is, they received some supplies and created a glass lens with a special refractive index that fixed the tank. The rest of it made no sense.